Category Archives: Satire

“If the reader will excuse me, I will say nothing of my antecedents, nor of the circumstances which led me to leave my native country; the narrative would be tedious to him and and painful to myself.”

I’ve been reading oodles of satirical fiction lately and entirely inadvertently, as this genre just seems to be dropping onto my lap. My first taste of utopian satire was given to me by Voltaire’s Candide, which left me rather unsure if we were going to be good friends. Then came Utopia by Thomas More and I was firmly hooked, only to have my enjoyment of it further strengthened with my read of Gulliver’s Travels. My most recent Classics Club spin book landed me with Erewhon by Samuel Butler. I was somewhat familiar with Butler from my skimming of some of his translation of The Odyssey (wouldn’t recommend it for a first read) so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Would he be a Voltaire, or a Swift or somewhere happily in between?

The narrator of Erewhon, Higgs, tells the reader of his journey to a fictional country, in fact, modelled on the country of New Zealand where Butler spent the early part of his life. Higgs loses his native guide, Chowbok, on a trek into the wild, and manages to wander into a society who, while they resemble the human race, have completely different standards for managing their nation.

Map of part of New Zealand to illustrateErewhon & Erewhon Revisitedsource Wikipedia

Butler explicates on some rather curious aspects of Erewhon society. For a start, the Erewhons view machines as dangerous to their community and anyone caught with one can be at risk of being put to death. Machines are regarded as having a greater ability than people in that they are growing and evolving at an exponential rate and thus, they have the capacity to enslave mankind. The Erewhons also view immorality as a sickness and actual illness as a crime. For example, a man who has lost his wife to illness is tried as a criminal, yet is lauded for his action of raising her insurance premium immediately before her death and, therefore, benefiting from it before he’d paid even two premiums. There are other curious idiosyncrasies to this society, such as the repellent manner with which they view birth, the rights of animals and vegetables, and their promotion of the idea of unreason, claiming that reason could not exist without it.

Butler claimed that Erewhon nearly wrote itself with some resistance from its author:

“I did not want to write Erewhon. I wanted to go on painting and found it an abominable nuissance being dragged willy-nilly into writing it. So with all my books — the subjects were never of my own choosing; they pressed themselves upon me with more force than I could resist. If I had not liked the subjects I would have kicked and nothing would have got me to do them at all. As I did like the subjects and the books came and said they were to be written, I grumbled a little and wrote them.”

Apparently it was Butler’s aim to make a commentary on the ills of Victorian society, but I had a difficult time finding Butler’s voice in the prose. With Voltaire or Swift, it was easier to see the issues that they were targeting with their criticism, but Butler was more obscure. He presented issues, but was less clear as to which side of the fence he stood, as some of the most ridiculous laws often had an element of truth to them. In fact, in a second preface to the book, Butler had to correct some misconceptions with regard to his novel, stating that contrary to the assumption that he was showing Darwin’s theory of evolution as absurd, in fact, he had a healthy respect for it, and he goes on, quite charmingly, to blame the Erewhons for all the inconsistencies in the story. For me, the novel soon degraded into great swathes of philosophical narrative with little to prop it up. I love philosophy, but to engage a reader one needs the background of a story to support it; Butler attempted the reverse in hoping that his philosophy would prop up his story. This approach only served to weaken the novel as a whole.

In spite of the novel’s mediocrity, it is quite obvious that Butler was a great thinker who explored some fascinating ideas that remain with us in the 21st century. His analogy between crime and disease, the over-emphasis on appearance of an individual, and the especially significant topic of how humans interact with technology and their enslavement to it are all powerful issues that still resonate with us through the centuries.

” …. so ingrained in the human heart is the desire to believe that some people really do know what they say they know, and can thus save them from the trouble of thinking for themselves, that in a short time would-be philosophers and faddists became more powerful than ever, and gradually led their countrymen to accept all those absurd views of life …… I can see no hope for the Erewhonians till they have got to understand that reason, uncorrected by instinct, is as bad as instinct uncorrected by reason ….”

“My father had a small Estate in Nottinghamshire; I was the Third of five Sons.”

As Samuel Johnson stated, Gulliver’s Travels is a work “so new and strange, that it filled the reader with a mingled emotion of merriment and amazement.” One must remember that at the time of Gulliver’s Travels, readers had rarely encountered prose fiction in the form of stories, let along the fantastical stories and adventures of Gulliver. They didn’t quite know how to respond.

In the last chapter of the this book, its purpose is laid out to the reader, that Swift’s “principal Design was to inform, and not amuse thee.”, a deviation in form, since most medieval writers sought to do both. The Roman lyric poet, Horace, stated that, “The poet who pleases everyone is the one who blends the useful with the sweet, simultaneously amusing and informing the reader.” Likewise, Thomas More in his Utopia states that his book is “A Truly Golden Handbook, No Less Beneficial than Entertaining”; Shakespeare seeks also to entertain and instruct, and The Cantebury Tales are described as “tales of best sentence and sola”, expressing the standard medieval definition of literature which both informs and gives pleasure. So why does Swift no longer want to amuse readers? Why does he choose to change the medieval model of how literature was represented? If his readers have not noticed the festering undercurrents of judgement within the story, it’s as if Swift was determined emphasis the seriousness of the work. As throughout his story, he gives the English people strengths that do not exist, so he also gives the reader amusement, where amusement does not exist. No wonder people were puzzled by his unique representation.

Born in Dublin in 1667, Swift spent the early years of his life moving between his hometown and London, attempting to gain a footing both in politics and the Church. His first position was with Sir William Temple a retired English diplomat who was writing his memoirs. Swift formed a close relationship with Temple and when he died, Swift hoped to gain a position at Canterbury or Westminister through King William, but the position never materialized. Amid various other disappointments, Swift continued his travels between Ireland and England, and during these years, he produced A Tale in a Tub and The Battle of the Books, gaining a reputation as a writer. Gulliver’s Travels was published later in his career, in 1726.

Episodic in nature, Gulliver’s Travels follows Lemuel Gulliver as he visits various unknown civilizations and learns their ways while gently comparing their societies with those of his own. I say gently because Gulliver makes his musings appear as a gentle examination, but Swift has other ideas. One doesn’t have to look very hard to see that this work is a sweeping condemnation of the human race.

Gulliver first lands in Lilliput where the society is diminutive in stature compared to Gulliver’s enormity. Initially accepted by the Lilliputians because of his good behaviour, he eventually upsets them by refusing to help them conquer another province and he is forced to escape.

His second adventure is nearly an inversion of the first, in that this time Gulliver is small and, landing in Brobdingnag, soon realizes the gigantic features of its inhabitants. While being poorly treated by his first family, Gulliver eventually comes to the Queen who treats him reasonably well and he is able to converse with the King. The King, however, becomes unhappy with his description of the state of Europe, in particular their use of guns and cannons.

The next adventure includes the flying island of Laputa, which is a rather bizarre place. The inhabitants are devotees of the arts of mathematics and music only, but not only fail to employ them for any benefit to society, they also, through self-deception, are blindly unable to recognize their failures.

The land of the Houyhnhnms is Gulliver’s fourth and final stop, a land of wise and noble horses, but he also encounters a race called Yahoos, a race very much like himself yet more filthy, vulgar, bestial and stupid. Although they at first recognize him as a Yahoo, the Houyhnhnms finally take to Gulliver, impressed with his cleanliness and ability to reason. Yet in spite of the relational ties he makes in this land and his desire to remain among these highly civilized beasts, the horses foresee a danger in Gulliver’s presence and send him off in a boat. When he arrive home, our protagonist is a changed man. Disgusted with the “Yahoos” of his country, he is barely able to live in their company, finally choosing a rather secluded life.

Through Gulliver’s interaction with the Liliputans and the Brobdingnagans, Swift satirizes British politics. The Liliputans are only concerned with petty and trivial problems, and in their self-aggrandization can only see themselves as governors of the whole world. Yet while Liliput represents a small view of man, Brobdingnag represents a large one. As in Liliput, Swift explores the contrasts between liberty and law, but now the situation is reversed as Gulliver is in miniature in a land of giants. The island of Laputa is built upon philosophy and it’s inhabitants are seen as Swift’s critque of scientism, or that the only way to true knowledge is through scientific disciplines. Only what can be seen and measured is taken into account, but, of course, this leaves no room to examine the soul. The land of the Houyhnhnms is perhaps the most fascinating part of the voyages. In this land the beasts are the civilized society and the Yahoos, who are human, are savages. The Houyhnhnms live by reason and that reason, working within nature, give rise to their idyllic existence. Gulliver believes that if he lives long enough with his friends, this virtue will rub off on him, but in fact the horses see his reason as imperfect and therefore he is more dangerous than a Yahoo who has no reason at all. In reality, Gulliver is half-way between both species, halfway between pure passion and pure reason.

Apparently both Sir Walter Scott and William Thackeray were shocked and repulsed by Gulliver’s fourth voyage, yet there is still argument as to whether Swift’s work was a satire in the form of Horace, where he is only lightly satirizing Gulliver’s idealism, or the heavier satire of Juvenal, whereupon his writing is a vitriolic, sarcastic diatribe condemning the human race. I’ll leave it to the reader to decide. Yet perhaps Swift himself can shed light on his intentions:

“I have ever hated all Nations professions and Communityes and all my love is towards individualls for instance I hate the tribe of Lawyers, but I love Councellor such a one, and Judge such a one for so with Physicians (I will not speak of my own trade) Soldiers, English, Scotch, French; and the rest but principally I hate and detest that animal called man, although I hartily love John, Peter, Thomas and so forth. This is the system upon which I have governed myself for many years (but do not tell) and so I shall go on until I have done with them I have got materials toward a treatise, proving the falsity of that definition animal rationale [rational animal], and to show it would be only rationis capax [capable of reason]. Upon this great foundation of Misanthropy (though not in Timon’s manner) The whole building of my Travells is erected. And I will never have peace of mind until all honest men are of my Opinion.”

While I thought Swift’s satire brilliant, and his characterizations mostly just, I felt that he focused only on the negative aspects of human nature. If Swift really saw the world only through a lense of disappointment, treachery, selfishness, and deceit, yet missed the integrity, loyalty, virtues and goodwill of the flip-side of human nature, that is truly a tragedy.

“The moste vyctoryous and tryumphante Kynge of Englande, Henry theight of that name, in all royal vertues Prince moste peerlesse, hadde of late in contrauersie with the right hyghe and myghtie king of Castell weightye matters, and of greate importaunce; for the debatement and final determination wherof the kinges Maieste sent me Ambassadour into flaunders, ioined in commission, and whom the kinges maiestie of late, to the greate reioysyng of all men, did preferre to the office of maister of the Rolles.”

I certainly promise not to write this review in Middle English but I thought I’d give you a taste of it. And, no, I didn’t read the complete book in ME, I was able to get through about 1/5 of it and then changed to a modern English version. And most happily, I might add. The original Utopia was written in Latin in a fine emulation of Ciceronian Latin, yet More took it a step further in humour and playfulness.

Born in London in 1478, Thomas More was a very learned man and, if he had been able to follow his inclinations, would have been destined for the church. His father, however, had other aspirations for him and, being a dutiful son, he conceded to his wishes and chose the law as his profession. Unexpectedly, he was a marvellous success as a lawyer. He soon had a thriving business and his extraordinary aptitude quickly brought him under scrutiny of the “higher-ups”. The political positions he was eventually offered were always accepted reluctantly, and More had a life-long dilemma with reconciling his loyalty to his sovereign and his loyalty as a Christian to his conscience.

As a Catholic, More opposed the Protestant Reformation. Serving as Lord Chancellor under King Henry VIII, he was accused of inflicting harsh treatment on heretics, but he denied the accusations. What is interesting is that his son-in-law at the time, was enticed by “Lutheran heresies”, and More’s reaction when speaking with his daughter, was surprisingly temperate: “Meg, I have borne a long time with thy husband. I have reasoned and argued a long time with him and still given him my poor fatherly counsel; but I perceive none of all this can call him home again. And, therefore, Meg, I will no longer dispute with him, not yet will I give him over; but I will go another way to work, and get me to God and pray for him.”

A man of honour and high standards, he would not even compromise for his family. When one of his sons-in-law expected preferential treatment because of More’s office, More stated, “If my father whom I dearly love were on one side and the devil, whom I sincerely hate, were on the other, the devil should have his rights.”

With King Henry VIII’s decision to divorce his queen, Catherine, More’s power began to unravel. While remaining quiet publicly, he continued to support the Pope over the King, and when he was required to sign a letter asking the Pope to annul the marriage, More refused. Henry soon began to isolate him. Eventually when More openly refused to acknowledge the annulment, Henry took action, arresting More for treason. He was decapitated on July 6, 1535. When the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, heard of his death, he said, “Well, this we will say, if we had been the master of such a servant, we would rather have lost the best city of our dominions than have lost such a counsellor.”

Map: This picture was taken from one of the first editions of the book, which is published online at the Bibliotheca Augustana

Probably inspired by his close friend, Desiderius Erasmus, Thomas More wrote Utopia in 1516 during an embassy to the Netherlands. A very brief book, yet with a complex structure, More used himself and a character called Raphael Hythloday to present political philosophies that range from the insightful and wise, to the curiously peculiar. In Book I, More crafts the setting for Utopia and then, through his character and Hythloday’s, offers a discourse on the evils and ills prevalent in European society. While having a parallel set-up to Plato’s Republic (Morton = Cephalus; Hythlodaye = Socrates; lawyer = Thrasymachus), More adopts occurrences from his own day to structure the framework of Utopia and construct a more politically and socially organized text. More uses this venue to chastize the actions of kings who use the country’s money for unproductive warmongering, and especially vilifies the practice of hanging thieves on the gallows, often for very petty infractions. In Book II, More offers a detailed description of Utopia, its inhabitants and its societal structure. The Utopian community supports common property, slavery and religious tolerance. Agriculture is the most treasured occupation but each Utopian is required to learn some other trade as well. Finery is frowned upon, pre-marital sex and adultery punishable, and while atheists are allowed in Utopia, they are shunned because their views are counter-productive to the Utopian community.

Scholars are still in disagreement as to More’s purpose when writing this book. On one hand, some purport that More’s intent was to write and endorse a treatise on communism and its implementation. Others scholars differ in opinion; while the book had a basis in the condition of European politics, it was nevertheless written tongue-in-cheek. Brewer in his Reign of Henry VIII, appears to support this view:

“Though the Utopia was not to be literally followed —- was no more than an abstraction at which no one would have laughed more heartily than More himself, if interpreted too strictly. Utopia might serve to show a corrupt Christendom what good could be effected by the natural instincts of men, when following the dictates of natural prudence and justice. If kings could never be elective in Europe, Utopia might show the advantage to a nation where kings were responsible to some other will than their own. If property could never be common, Utopia might teach men how great was the benefit to society, when the state regarded itself as created for the wellbeing of all, and not of a class of a favoured few …….”

C.S. Lewis, a medieval and renaissance scholar, takes More’s book as a light holiday work, and this summation rings true, as More make some comments himself that were obscure, but appeared to poke fun at his work. Lewis states:

“….. it appears confused only so long as we are trying to get out of it what it never intended to give. It becomes intelligible and delightful as soon as we take it for what it is —- a holiday work, a spontaneous overflow of intellectual high spirits, a revel of debate, paradox, comedy and (above all) of invention, which starts many hare and kills none ….. There is a thread of serious thought funning through it, an abundance of daring suggestions, several back-handed blows at European institutions ……. But he does not keep our noses to the grindstone. He says many things for the fun of them, surrendering himself to the sheer pleasure of imagined geography, imagined language, and imagined institutions. That is what readers whose interests are rigidly political do not understand: but everyone who has ever made an imaginary map responds at once.”

If we take into account some of the regional names in this work, the purpose may become clearer still. “Utopia” literally means, “no place”; “Achoria” means “Nolandia”; “Polyleritae” means “Muchnonsense”; “Macarenses” means “Happiland”; and the river “Anydrus” means “Nowater”. Even Raphael’s last name, Hythlodaeus, translates as “dispenser of nonense”. Was More being ironic or serious? I doubt we can ever know for sure.

In spite of the obscurity of the book and some of the controversies surrounding More, I loved both the author and this work. He appeared to treat both his wives well, quite clearly loved his children, was well thought of and respected, and in spite of his position, chose to write a story that not only amused his readers, but allowed them to explore human nature and come to their own conclusions with regard to universal issues. Thomas More is a man to be admired and Utopia is certainly a book to be read!

“In the castle of Baron Thunder-ten-tronckh in Westphalia, there once lived a youth endowed by nature with the gentlest of characters.”

Published when Voltaire was 66 years old, Candide was expressly written to satirize the philosophy of Optimism. This optimism was not simply the positive hope of better circumstances, but the belief that everything that happened was for the best, no matter if good or bad, happy or tragic. This philosophy disgusted Voltaire because he felt that it left no facility for bettering oneself or one’s surroundings and that it supported fatalism and complacency. The tragic earthquake in Lisbon in 1755 seemed to precipitated the writing of this novel, causing the author to question justice in such a calamity, and reflected in his poem, “Poem on the Disaster of Lisbon,” written weeks afterward. Candide was further emphasis of Voltaire’s rejection of the attitude that life was the “best of all possible worlds” and that everything that happened in it was for the best.

Voltaire was an established writer and thinker by the time he wrote Candide, yet a controversial figure who by many was both admired and hated. He was continuously clashing with the government and the church, suffering two periods of incarceration, and most of his adult life was spent exiled from Paris, the city of his birth. Much of his works were published under a pseudonym to avoid prosecution. During a stint in exile, he spent three years in Great Britain and, impressed with the freedoms of England, particularly that of speech, his stay intensified his desire for reforms in his home country. In 1758 he settled in Ferney in eastern France, spending his time farming, writing and supporting local business. Candide was written there, not long after his move.

Satire: the use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues

Candide is a young man who has grown up living in a state of perfect happiness, guided by his tutor, Pangloss, who is entrenched in the doctrines of Leibnizian Optimism. Leibnizian Optimism, a philosophy of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, believed that this world is the best of all possible worlds because it was created by an omniscient God who would not create flaws if a better world could have been created, therefore, whatever we experience in this world, be it good or bad, must work towards good. When Candide is thrown out of his paradise, he travels the world, at times escaping persecution, and at others, searching for his love, Cunégonde, experiencing many horrific trials and suffering that challenge the philosophy entrenched by his tutor, causing him to question over and over, if this really is “the best of all possible worlds.”

I really whiffle-waffled over how I felt about this book. On one hand, Voltaire can write a fast-moving, engaging tale. His storyline was amusing and it did contain deeper themes that, if the reader had a strong attention span, challenged him to think about his view of the world, his place in society and his response to injustice. Yet Voltaire’s method was rushed and honestly, just too absurd to ellict introspection for long. Candide flew from one adventure to the other, characters threw philosophical comments around, but there was no time or room for philosophy itself. Voltaire never took a thought or comment from a character into deeper conversation; he simply told the reader what the characters did or thought, but we weren’t privy to the conversation. As a reader, you were often left swimming in a murky haze of Voltaire-imposed ignorance ……. Yet perhaps this was Voltaire’s intention. Perhaps at the end of the book, as Candide states, “we must cultivate our garden,” Voltaire meant that we should all mind our own business, not examine things too closely, and just work with what is at hand. Okay, but it is self-introspection that causes a human being to better himself, it is dialogue and discussion that can often help a society, as well as having the possibility to harm it. People need to have hope, and to cultivate hope it often means having dreams that reach outside our immediate circle of life. Within the light-hearted narrative that almost masked the tragedy, I felt a fatalism with which I could not accept or sympathize.

That said, these were only my impressions of a book that touches on topics of which I have a limited understanding. To give an informed opinion on Voltaire’s stance, you would really need to have more than a cursory knowledge of Leibnizian Optimism, as well as having at least summary knowledge of his contemporaries, with a dollop of the study of the Enlightenment on top. So I will count this as the beginning of my inquiry into the Enlightenment and Voltaire, and hope that my journey fairs better than the journey of Candide. And until my next foray into Voltaire, I will be cultivating my garden.

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